Android Chaplaincy

Postponement will only buy me another night. For those not versed in New York City winters, darkness can drape over our metropolis as early as 5 PM. This is not to mention the afternoons when a candle can easily come in handy at 4 PM. A day here can fly away in a matter of hours—so it seems. My habit is to turn my cellphone off before heading to bed. To tuck it away in the upper drawer of my former public school’s desk. With it there, we are safe from each other, and I give myself a respite from the pervasive G5 frequencies trying to animate my digital device.

I am one of those who has always been drawn into the night and that is where I find affinity with an after-hours Support Line. During my toddler’s years, there were the visitations of beings from other realms who sought to interact with me, matter of fact. The complicated dreams, call them nightmares, were also a common recurrence. I learned not to resist my active mind when the single lightbulb in my green bedroom went out. I would clutch the plastic box containing a medal of the Virgin Mary, or simply try to get my eyes used to the change of light. Before shapes became clear to my sight, a towel hanging from a hook might appear to present itself as a ghost. Items like bedroom furniture would configure themselves as unfamiliar entities. As soon as I could join the adults in my home, I figured it was best to delay sleep. No one would comment on how late it was for a five-year old to be awake at 11 PM. I pitied the boy next door whose mother would put him to bed at around 8 PM. How boring. But even more, he never got to watch the scary television shows, one of which would host a man in a cage, disheveled, a patient in psychiatric hospital who would eat the fleas he would fish out of his hair. Nothing strange about this. The man in the cage got away with talking about the dictatorial government at that time in the Dominican Republic. The hours at which this “comedy” show aired coincided with those when people could be disappeared from public gatherings. Joaquín Balaguer, the despotic president during the 1970s used darkness as the cover for his macabre machinery.

In the 1980s, the night could sometimes find me from the north to the east of my Caribbean birthplace. I would do so by public transportation, consisting of mini buses so thoroughly packed with bodies and driven so recklessly fast that we called them voladoras, flyers. These daredevils on wheels could be caught in the old commercial district of Santo Domingo, near the historic zone dating back to the 1600s. Colonial and modernists buildings interacted in this area in a rather syncretic way. This too was the site where sex workers would come out into the streets when the stores closed. In these old days, as some would say, one could walk these streets with very little trepidation. The night was just a transition when those like me would be more active. Voladoras would drop you off at your destination at one of the eastern cities you were aiming to get to, after which, a swift ride on a motoconcho, a public motorcycle taxi—with no helmet on head—would help people like me complete the last leg of the route and get home—art school for me. At night, my classmates and I would cook rice and beans, knock at jet setter’s restaurant doors asking for leftovers, talk and listen to one another like therapists without any formal degrees or state certifications. Some of us would let loose our socially-hidden facets. We were young, and missing sleep time would not make a dent on our smooth faces; not quite yet.

The Support Line I first trained with and then signed up to serve as part of my incursions into chaplaincy, is a nocturnal one. People can reach out to cell phone companions like me for any conceivable reason. No script can prepare a listener for what is coming their way. Slide the finger after the phone rings. Keep this down for a few seconds to allow for a voice to travel to your ears, that is, if the Android is not already on speaker mode. We have an average of 20 minutes for each of the auditory encounters that can have so much at stake. It is possible for anything to arrive unexpectedly and to require our full selves to welcome it. No recipe, dress rehearsal or workshop would thoroughly prepare one for what can, might and will open up with every call. This is my first formal introduction with the work of a chaplain. I thus make sure my Android is charged to 100% and keep the charger by my side, as I might need it. I am not even anxious. Perhaps this is an indication that I am in for this.

I clumsily maneuver the keys on my phone, if one can call the digital numbers and symbols that. I have the urgency to answer myself, quickly, between ring and ring, “who am I?” I almost need a response to this question, often perceived as a platitude, before I show up for the person on the other side of phone. Why haven’t I bothered to engage this quest in advance and to at least find responses to it through a bunch of online aphorisms. I am running short on time. “Support Line, Nicolás speaking.” How can I help you?” sounds formulaic. Trite. Uncreative. I am not here to help anyone. My job is not to fix anything or offer solutions. It is late in New York City. Past my bed reading time. The Bellevue Literary Review and Don E. Steward’s, I am Listening as Fast as I Can: The Night Ministry in San Francisco will have to wait. My listening is beginning to emerge, still not as fast as Don’s or the voladora minibuses in Santo Domingo. I am actually listening as slowly as the circumstances permit me to.

Joseph calls the Support Line from the Midwest. He sounds agitated and keeps saying how horrible what is happening to him is. His privacy has been breached by a person who he met virtually. In Joseph’s words, this individual had crossed all of his boundaries, meaning that his safety was compromised. His phone line, accounts of all kinds and security data have been phished. There is no place where the caller feels secure, since those who are supposed to be there to help have become part of the team that makes his life horrible. I imagine myself being in such a conundrum. What would I need to invite equanimity into my life? Is the story conveyed true? Does it made any difference for me to inquire as to its veracity? If the person confiding their impending risk of danger says so, this is to be taken at face value.

I hesitate in appealing for divine assistance of any kind, unless this is requested by the caller, which Joseph does. What if I were to guide this person back into his body? I know I would be taking a chance, given how the body itself can be a trigger for those who have been abused or have lived through traumatic experiences of a physical nature. Could I help this man tonight to contemplate the possibility of feeling supported by something, let’s say by the Earth—by a chair? Joseph mentions that he is sitting at his kitchen table because this is the warmest spot in his home. “Would you be willing to allow the chair you are sitting in to hold you? Imagine that you do not have to do anything at this moment, but to pause and let the chair do its job. You can keep your eyes open to remain aware of where you are, or opt for a soft gaze to give a to rest your sight? If you would like to, you can bring one hand to where your heart is and one to your belly, and breathe deep and gently.” At this point, Joseph approaches me about a meditation. I bring safety to the forefront of the phrases I use: “May you find easy within. May ease arise in your space, the room where you ar at. May ease reach every corner of your home. May ease surround the building or house you are in as we talk.” The 20 minutes are reaching their end. I do not want to tell Joseph that I need to close the channel we have established. This is when he volunteers to express that he is feeling better and to articulate gratitude for our encounter. In retrospect, I fail to note that Joseph mentioned 988 when we first connected (a note to myself). However, as our interaction is concluding, I could tell that he is not at high risk for suicide. Calls keep coming in like a shower for which I have just pulled out a symbolic umbrella. The droplets on the phone translate into pings. Am I ready for the upcoming storm?

Amalia does not disclose her location and I would not ask. She might be from the South. Would she want to know where my accent is from? This does not come up. I am not inclined to speak about me. I am here to listen to others, something I have been diligently learning in my meditation, mediation and chaplaincy trainings, albeit in my career as an artist I had been taught how to best use air space to my advantage. There is the elevator pitch we learned at professional development workshops. The facilitator shared how we might find ourselves in an elevator or a similar place with 2 minutes to sell our upcoming project, or to explain to our captive audience what our art is all about. We had to hurry before the elevator got to the floor where doors would part and gone would be our potential collector, curator, patron, or art critic. Long past are those days for me. My interest in the Support Line is a reflection of that. I am not running after something, and I am not chased by anything. This is in reference to the concept of a career.

These days I walk and listen. But Amalia! She is curious about God. “Oh God!” The subject of weed in relationship with letting go surfaces during our dialogue. To be more precise, this does not surface, it is meant to be what the caller wants to discuss: God within that interstitial field that gives way to dropping all preoccupations, commitments; the trappings of managing to stay on task instead of living. “Amalia, I hear you say that you are curious about God and that you are searching for meaning in silence.” I am not prepared for what her response is, and I somehow saw this coming fast. Amalia happens to be a designer, a line of work I was studying at the college in the Dominican Republic I reached by taking a flying bus and a moto taxi—usually late at night. No helmet. All my trust on Caribbean angels on duty and on the driver. Knock on mahogany. The part that troubles me in this interaction with Amalia is my inability to respond to her theological quest, and that is exactly what she is calling for. She is not seeking to hear about herself, stopping me when the active listening that I am doing becomes redundant to her. She names it for its name: “You are reflecting back at me, and I am here because I want to have a conversation with you.” I am reassured that I am doing a good job on the Line. I am also prompted to make a detour. This is not working for the caller, and who do I call? I fear the humiliation of having Amalia hang up on me. That our call keeps extending is a good sign to me. We are 19 minutes into it and still going.

I relax my boundaries. The creative part that Amalia and I have in common is a subject I can personally expand on. The issue is God. Why, though? I graduated from Union Theological Seminary, perhaps the most prestigious school of its kind in the country. I have debated and theologized in classes taught by luminaries like James Cone, the father of Black Liberation Theology; and Daisy Machado, a key figure in religion and the US-Mexican borderlands, as well as in Latinx Protestantisms. The more I give, the more Amalia asks for. Can I have Amalia expand on her understanding of God or the role of compassion in one of her family interactions. But I can see how this is not going to take us out of the cul-de-sac we are in. Why am I holding back when all this person desires is to be in space with another being, as equals? What is this impasse disclosing about power imbalances where Amalia is meant to talk and I am meant to listen? What would an honest back and forth look like? I have worked to let go of my art training, some sort of de-schooling. What is here for me in having a tight grip on my role as a chaplain in the making? Isn’t it enough that I can pass for a Catholic priest without even trying? The glasses. The solemn black clothes I wear. The cropped graying hair. My Android obliterates all of this. Presence is what remains, what is central and what matters. Those calling cannot see my church-like quarters or the plaster saints all around me. After 35 minutes Amalia thanks me. I too thank her for calling. Glad that I made it through my inaugural night on the Support Line, and not without an abundance of lived experience.

The Buddhist teaching that I see naturally arising from both of the calls described above is that of the bodhisattva, with its emphasis on interdependence. The bodhisattva is the one who vows to postpone their own enlightenment until all beings have attain this. This presents itself as an unfulfillable practice, nonetheless one that points to the unsurmountable suffering in this world and, at the same time, leaves the possibility open for overcoming it. I am reminded by this of the concept of the kingdom of God in Catholic liberation theology, not as a heavenly escape from our earthly toils, but as a call to dismantle oppressive systems and bring about justice in the here and now. No end in sight.

There is nothing eschatological either in the path of the bodhisattva or in the liberatory theology within Catholicism that addresses our responsibility in a messy present, rather than focusing our efforts on a perfect future state of bliss. What draws me into these perspectives is the call to be there with others with the intention of facilitating a liberation that goes beyond my own, and that is tied to that of each and all who call. The calling in question does not distinguish those who share and the ones meant to listen because the pursuit of freedom is a collective undertaking. That is what Amalia might have instigated with her wanting to make our conversation about us. While I can’t picture a devoted bodhisattva or liberation theologian preaching in a traditional religious format, I do see their unstated activation of this as an exercise in interdependence. Both of them are in for all, whether the “poor,” the oppressed, the suffering, the lonely, the forgotten, the seeker; and that includes themselves/ourselves. I too yearn for a response to Amalia’s question to me. An honest consideration on my part could have worked to our benefit. “Ask me a question,” she demanded of me, as we were about to say goodbye. Now I ponder how this might have acted as an equalizer. Was her request geared toward my own enlightenment as I sought to be a presence for her? Was this a gift in disguise that got lost in the drawing of boundaries?

In The Bodhisattva Ideal: Five Rare Powers, Roshi Joan Halifax elaborates on how, “The first Bodhisattva power is to foster interconnected communities of integrity and care. This power is about inclusion, intimacy, inter-being, and moral character. As Thich Nhat Hanh has suggested, the coming Buddha is the sangha.”[1] The Support Line encapsulates this in the two interactions I was part of. The dead end I described in the second call could be traced to a lack of intimacy, to remaining wrapped in my own skin and individuality. I was adamant to becoming undone by Amalia’s impetus to get closer to God, to me, to us. Halifax continues in her essay with a sentence that further explains my frozenness. “Realizing the Bodhisattva Ideal is about being authentic, real, raw, wide open, free of views, intimate, and willing to be broken apart and to repair oneself and each other.”[2] The calls kept coming like a river in continuous flow. When the Support Line companions are off, a message service is available. The suffering, the need, the pain, the pull toward others keeps bodhisattvas awake. A few evenings from now, I will plug in my number into the system and let my Android ring. If Amalia calls again, great. If not, her teachings on intimacy have startled me enough to not fear the kind of closeness that is conscious of the boundless essence of connection, while affording others the highest form of respect. Good night.

Each individual story here is a composite of different ones and all original names, genders, and locations in this piece have been changed, so they do not match people I have talked with.

[1]. Roshi Joan Halifax, “The Bodhisattva Ideal: Five Rare Powers,” Upaya Zen Center website, (July 4, 2024), accessed March 24, 2026, https://www.upaya.org/2024/07/fiverarepowers/

[2] . Ibid.

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